WeeChat Review

Review of WeeChat powered by the Slant community.

WeeChat is a fast, light and extensible chat client. It runs on many platforms, is modular, can support other protocols, is scriptable in 6 languages, fully-documented both in and out of the program, and actively developed.

Pro

Extensible via plugins and scripts

Pro

Free and open source

WeeChat is a free program licensed under GPL with source code available on GitHub.

Pro

Intuitive, detail-oriented interface

By default WeeChat has a chat area surrounded by a nicklist on the right, title bar on top, and status and input bars at the bottom. The layout, though, can be completely customized and split vertically or horizontally. It supports 256 colors as long as the terminal supports 256 colors as well as bolded, italicized and underlined text. Even includes little touches as differently colored nicknames for people /away.

Pro

Huge library of scripts

Pro

Actively developed

Pro

Incremental text search

Text is searched through in real time as search terms are being written.

Pro

Active and helpful community support

Weechat community can be found on #weechat @ Freenode. The community, including devs, is helpful in answering any WeeChat related questions.

Pro

Can act as a relay for mobile client

It's possible to leave WeeChat running at home/on a server, then connect to it with a smartphone client. This way a choppy mobile internet connection won't disconnect from IRC, and still allow using a touch screen optimized UI.

Pro

Mouse support

Mouse click and gestures are supported on a local terminal as well as remote terminal accessed via ssh regardless of screen/tmux. To enable mouse support use /mouse enable command or press alt+m.

Cons

Con

Scripting API allows poorly written scripts to be used as attack vectors

In many functions, for speed reasons, WeeChat does not check if your pointer is correct or not. It’s your job to check you’re giving a valid pointer, otherwise you may see a nice crash report ;)

Con

No official GUI option

While there are some unofficial remote graphical interfaces available for WeeChat, it is intended to be used as a terminal client. As such it might be challenging to use to those accustomed to graphical interfaces.